Robert K Hall M.D. was a psychiatrist and a lay Buddhist priest. Once a student of Fritz Perls and Ida Rolf, he had been a pioneer in the integration of Gestalt psychology, bodywork, and meditation for many years. Dr. Hall was co-founder of Lomi School in northern California, and led Vipassana meditation retreats at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, and in Todos Santos, Baja Sur, Mexico where he lived from 2001, offering weekly Dharma talks and guided meditation until his death in 2019.
More and more, the teaching practice takes me into the community where I engage directly with students. My focus right now is on bringing the continuity of the Dharma into the market place. Although retreating is an important form for self-knowledge, I find myself less interested in the immediate results of a retreat and more interested in helping students investigate their relationship to the ups and downs of their everyday life.
Nature, death and spontaneous freedom continually interweave themselves into my teaching. From the forest of Thailand, where I spent several years, I bring a deep awareness of the healing quality of nature into my teachings. Relaxing into our true nature allows us to realize what it means to be a human being. It is here we find a resting point, a counterbalance to the speed and turbulence of our culture.
My work in hospice brings a sense of urgency into my teaching. Working with the theme of death and dying reveals the here and now of life to us, how important it is to open to each loss, change and transition that marks our path. Life is precious. We need to awaken without hesitation.
Many of us crave to be more calm and centered. We know that life has more to offer than this fleeting material world. For each of us, the Dharma offers an immediacy of freedom for which we do not have to strive or wait. In practice, we can learn to relax deeply into the moment and rediscover spontaneous freedom.
Ronya Banks is the founder and lead teacher of the Asheville Insight Meditation community in Asheville, NC. Sitting over a year cumulatively on silent Vipassana meditation retreats, Ronya has received instruction from over 30 different Vipassana teachers, including Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Rodney Smith, Phillip Moffit, Pat Coffey, Gina Sharpe, and Sharon Salzberg. She has also been influenced by teachers such as Goenka, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Pema Chodron. Ronya is a graduate of the joint IMS/Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader training program. She also received weekly personal dhamma instruction for five years from Burmese monk and Buddhist scholar, Bhante UJotika Bhivamsa. Born in Kuwait, of Palestinian descent, and raised Muslim, Ronya values diversity, inclusiveness, and equality among ALL human beings.
A dedicated practitioner of Vipassana (insight) meditation, Roxanne Dault (she, her) has sat many long retreats in Asia and in the West. Roxanne is a Guiding Teacher at True North Insight where she teaches weekly sits and residential retreats. She is involved in different projects to share the Dharma in the West. She has completed the four-year Insight Meditation Society (IMS) Teacher Training. Her teaching is influenced by indigenous spiritual practices, her many travels and her experience in Somatic Experiencing®, a body-mind approach aimed at relieving the symptoms of trauma. Roxanne wants to share her love for the Dharma so that we can all touch freedom in every moment! She speaks French, English and is learning her ancestors' language, Anishinaabemowin. www.roxannedault.ca
Ruth Denison studied in Burma in the early 1960s with the meditation master Sayagi U Ba Khin. She has been teaching since 1973 and is founder of Dhamma Dena, a desert retreat center in Joshua Tree, CA, and The Center for Buddhism in the West in Germany.
Ruth King is an insight meditation teacher and emotional wisdom author and life coach. Mentored in Theravada Buddhism and the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, King teaches at insight meditation communities nationwide and offers the Mindful of Race Training program to teams and organizations. King is on the teacher’s council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and is the author of several publications including Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism From The Inside Out. www.RuthKing.net
